Poor Tony Stark is having a really bad day in the first Iron Man 3 trailer!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I didn't watch any of that "trailer for a trailer" bullshit they're doing these days... I don't get the point, unless it's used as a joke the way JJ Abrams teased his few frames from Star Trek Into Darkness. So, most of this trailer was new to me (minus the destruction of a certain Malibu estate, which I saw at Comic-Con because I'm, like, totally special you guys).

Gotta say, this looks amazing to me and bleak as hell. We'll see how it plays out. One of the joys of these films for me is how they play with comedy and with Shane Black onboard writing and directing I'm expecting some super special dark humor... but this trailer is filled with nothing but angst and dread.

I like that it actually feels like a fight this time. Tony isn't facing a pissed off drunk Russian or a suit with ambition. He's under attack, seemingly even from his own tech.

Tony referencing Avengers = Glee
More Cheadle please.
Guy Pierce's role looks to be expanded from Extremis. (Not a bad thing)
Mandarin has his rings, has his look, has an ominous voice. I'm sold.
It looked like the Extremis armor was pulling pepper out of bed...not the Iron Patriot armor.

Marvel have so got their shit together in a way WB and DC can only dream. Everyone who said it would be difficult for the Avengers to go solo again were soooo wrong.
How do you top the Battle of New York? You bring Tony Stark to his knees with a personal attack on everything he holds dear and make his worst fears real. This looks fantastic and looks like it puts Stark under pressure in a way he hasn't had since the cave.
And the creepy stuff with his tech looks quite chilling when Pepper encounters the Iron Man as Tony sleeps.
It was RDJ's call and option to pick the IM3 director and he was right to bring his old buddy Shane Black to stretch him and take the character somewhere bold and new.
Oh and Sir Ben is the balls as The Mandarin!
Next year can't come quick enough :-)

Gives me high hopes. One of the things that annoyed me most about IM1 and IM2 was the awful (imo) cheesy guitar music they used over money shots. Personally I'd be happy to have no music playing so we can just hear the suit and the wind and all that.
Awesome trailer, Sir Ben sounds fantastic.

The other heroes don't respond most likely for the same reason they don't respond in the comic books.
They've got their own problems to deal with.
In this case...
Thor is off world doing his thing in Thor 2.
Captain America is off dealing with S.H.I.E.L.D biz in the form of another Hydra style hostile takeover.
Hulk probably is just living life. What's he going to do? Hulk out when he sees Stark's house hit the ocean on television while he's in India treating patients? What would that offer?
People who say, "How do you explain no other heroes showing up?" are annoying. We live in a world where the police can barely make it to a crime when you phone them and give them an address, but in the movies it's unrealistic if another hero you fought alongside that one time doesn't immediately pop by exactly when you need them?

SPOILERS - Based on what I've read, Tony has 40-something suits that he controls at one point in the movie and there is also a question as to whether the suits need someone in them or can they simply be controlled by Jarvis?
It seems to me that a suit controlled by an artificial intelligence, such as Jarvis, or a full on cybernetic organism would be the logical extension of Suit technology as Stark can't be everywhere. I know Rhodes/War Machine is supposed to fill in that void but he's a military bitch and can't be fully trusted.
So I'm wondering if Marvel is setting up a Frankenstein story with Stark being the post-modern Prometheus thus setting the stage for Ultron to be the Big Bad of Iron Man 4 if there is one after Avengers 2!?!
That makes a lot of sense to me. Tony fighting his own creation and dealing with the fallout of his own mistakes could make for a strong story.
What say you?

I mean, I don't mind that cos I loved The Dark Knight Rises and this still looks great, but is no one else getting that vibe from this? A dark trailer that indicates that the third chapter seems to concentrate on our rich hero getting knocked down harder than ever before by a somber philospophical "terrorist" who sounds like he's putting the World to rights? Who's managed to infiltrate and use the main character's own technology against them? Stark/Wayne being a shadow of their former selves? And the suit powering down logo-the broken Bat mask? I mean, that might just be the marketing heads trying to ride the crest of what remains of that wave.

I like iron man a lot but this just looks like iron man is Vs two helicopter and ben kingsley who looks like he should be in the hobbit.
Also why is he cocking that tiny ass gun.
Also i am going to go ahead and call that the iron man that grabs pepper is just a dream sequence.

kingsley looks exactly how i would expect a non asian 21st century mandarin to look
if the storyline is tight, marvel is looking at another hit
cant wait to see all the crying about another comic book movie

If you watch the BTS of IRON MAN 2 all everyone talks about is carefully recreating the formula that worked for part 1. They took no risks and neutered the "Demon in a Bottle" arc. All the best sequels are not carbon copies of the originals, but take the characters and the audience out of their comfort zone. This looks to be exactly that.

Then again, the trailer for IM2 looked pretty cool as well and look how that turned out...
That said, I love the fact that Tony is having some sort of PTSD from The Avengers, I wasn't expecting them to mention that film at all so it's great to have that continuity.
It will be interesting to see how Stark has changed from the events in NY. Captain America said Stark wasn't the type to lay on the wire and give up his life yet at the end that's exactly what he did when he flew the nuke up into the portal. Will he be able to do that again?
I also loved the voice over, although I can't tell if it's Ben Kingsley's voice or Guy Pearce. I presume it's meant to be Kingsley but it sounds so different from his usual voice.
I didn't think I would be excited about a standalone movie after The Avengers, but this has definitely got me excited. Roll on May 3 (and some shawarma)...

when he kept saying in interviews that the third entry in genre/scifi/fantasy/superhero trilogies always suck, but the second is usually the best.
He wa screwed the moment that Marvel Studios decided to rush it, though. I still contend that II isn't as bad as people continue to make it out to be. It should've been more like this, but, oh well...

Learn to read fucktard.
I do hope you are right on the story i really want this to be a solid story.
Ben kingsely is a fucking hobbit looking drag queen at first glance, they did the same thing in ironman 2 made ivan look like a pansy with the girls glasses and the bird.
http://moviecarpet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Mickey-Rourke-as-Ivan-Vanko-Whiplash-in-Iron-Man-2.jpg
just in case you don't believe me.

I couldn't have given a lick for the idea of the Mandarin as a villain, until this here trailer made him into something I didn't even think he could be. An unrelenting force. This one small trailer had it all, amazing looking Hero, Evil as heck villain, Baysplosions(the things we like about them) and a promise of a huge challenge for our hero to overcome, that can't be easily answered with fists. How awesome is it that Marvel can outdo D.C. at every turn.
That last shot of Tony pulling the armor in the snow? Completely off the pages of a late 80's early 90's Batman project where he was in the snow, pulling his burden in a duffle bag while having hallucinations...While D.C. is looking around trying to come up with ONE good movie in a few years, Marvel is just blowing them up. Wiping the floor with them. Kinda like Obama did with Romney last night...Yeah, I went there.. :) Gotta go polish my bayonet...

Tony has PTSD from his experiences in TA. Has an immense fear of loosing Pepper, and overreacts, creating the iron suit army to compensate. Jarvis or some other way is created to control the "drone" Iron Man suits.
The mansion is attacked, Pepper kidnapped (possibly killed) and almost all of his tech is destroyed. He manages to cobble together a suit from parts and pieces from what's left of the mess, just like the Mark I from the first movie. Not even a full suit, like his body exposed in places.
He realizes he can never be without the suit, so he has the surgery to have the tech put into his body, so that the suit is always in him in nano-form or what teh fuck ever. I forget which comic storyline did that. Was it "Extremis"?

It looks like all is NOT well with Tony after the events of the Avengers. I wonder if it will be the same for Thor & Captain America. Saving the earth can take it's toll, especailly after what Tony went through.

I can't help it--as good as the rest of the trailer was (and being punctuated by "Heroes...there's no such thing"), seeing House Stark collapse into an even more blatantly CGI than I would have guessed pile of rubble just took me right out of the thing. Maybe it was some kind of fucked-up 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' flashback or something.
That said, the rest of it still was good enough to offset it...I'm more than a little intrigued to see how this plays out come May.

Can't wait to see what he brings to the Mandarin. And yeah, that sounds like his voice in the trailer. Love how the "SOUNDS LIKE BANE! SOUNDS LIKE BANE! FAIL!" trolls are already out in force. Do us a favor: fuck off already, chuckleheads.

Good shit.
question remains, will Mandarin be a seriously unrelenting threat using more than big robot suits to fight Iron Man.
I can't imagine they'd pull an Iron Man 2 on us and just copy the original movie's villain.

It looks big and I love that Tony is going to be broken down to pick himself back up again.
Also drop this "How will the explain the Avengers not coming together!!!"... Um just like they did in the comics. The heroes have their own sequels with threats to deal with.
Thor and Cap will be facing personal villains where the world they know is threatened. If they are busy why would they go help Tony Stark? So there it's over... That question should never be asked again.
IM3 looks epic. Can't wait.

trailer is awesome, but that IS the Iron Patriot waking up Pepper violently. And that absolutely IS Ben Kingsley's voice. And he IS doing a weird accent. He is British, you know. Can't place this accent - it's American, sort of. Like perhaps someone foreign, middle-eastern, maybe, who was educated by Americans. But May is too far away!!!

Too many people get hung up on following the comic when some characters are actually pretty dull in the source material. I'm not a big IM follower, so there's likely to be some cool storylines on the Mandarin I missed, but I always felt like he looked cool and had cool powers, but wasn't all that interesting.
It looks like they were able to design a guy, see into his fucked up head and pull out something threatening as well as interesting. (of course I could be totally wrong- gotta wait and see the movie) And the casting of a white guy (yeah I know Kingsley is part Indian, but he's definitely more white than Chinese) is brilliant. The Ming The Merciless/Fu Manchu thing is just joyous.
I feel similarly about Darkseid. Kirby designed him as sort of a 1 dimensional evil tyrant, which worked at the time. People who say Thanos is a deeper and more complex character than Darkseid are right ...as far as comicbook storylines to date, but wrong in terms of potential. Darkseid as a Superman villain could explore so many dark corners of the psychology of men who have power and how they relate to each other as adversaries but also as kindred spirits. His relationship with Superman and with his subjects of Apokalips in The Animated Series planted seeds in my head for what could be a brilliant character.

1. Superhero does amazing things.
2. Superhero is troubled.
3. Superhero loses/doesn't use their powers for the 2nd act.
4. Superhero needs to get powers back to overcome their troubles and save the day.
Seriously, how many times are they going to use that formula in a superhero movie? This looks like more of the same with Stark stuck somehwere in the snow with a suit that doesn't work. We can actually relate to their human side without removing their powers if its written properly. If its because of the CGI budget, get a bigger budget or don't cast people like Gwyneth Paltrow. Nobody is going to see the movie because of her so cast someone unknown and divert her salary.

Why would Guy Pearce's character say "Some call me a terrorist, I prefer a teacher. Lesson 1 heroes there are no heroes." That's the Mandarin talking not the scientist that created Extremis Killian which is who Pearce is playing.

Favreau found an almost perfect balance with the first film, and certainly Shane Black can aswell.
but maybe this poster Avengers Marvel is going to be darker in tone?
I mean after the events of Avengers, perhaps all the heroes are going to start taking things a bit more seriously.

Way too many similarities to the Dark Knight Rises, I think marvel is running its course people will soon get tired of all these superhero movies and lets face it they're all really about the same plot.

That is, the pompous jerk who wants the same gold ring as Tony, but who ends up begin on the same side when the chips are down, and then ends up being a tragic loss at the hands of the villain that helps spur the hero to win the day.
I don't know about his story in the comics, so I may be conflating that armor and Guy Pearce in the trailer. But it seems they're setting up some kind of rivalry that is then overwhelmed by the force of the villain.
A lot of familiar themes in this trailer, but it sure does look entertaining.

Oct. 23, 2012, 11:40 a.m. CST

by DrMorbius

KINGsley. Twice I mucked up his name in one post.
by didntpulloutintimecop
S'okay pally, you only mucked up
Guy Pearce's name once.

Each film was smartly done and totally plot-independent of the others. I'd like to see superhero movies move towards that james bondish serialization. Marvel's kicking ass right now but it's going to burn out eventually. This sort of this would also work well for Batman. I'm sick of Batman origins. Actually, I'm sick of origins in general. I guess this is off topic sry.

That is Ben Kingsley's VoiceOver. No it is not Guy Pierce.
That is the iron man armor that grabs Pepper. As someone said, he controls the armor with his mind, we see it in pieces on the bedroom floor, she touches him in his sleep (looks like hes having a nightmare) and the armor responds to her touching him. It has absolutely no blue on it and it is the same light gold as it is in every other shot. Even on my IPhone it was painfully obvious.
The "iron patriot" is war machine. This has already been confirmed with Don Cheadle being photographed in the practical suit on set for close-ups. Apparently the US Gov thought a jet-black armor made the political orientation too tough to tell in combat with all the armor suits in the world at the time (IM2 showed many of these already being developed).
I have a bad feeling that the Mandarin will get his 'power' from nano bots which he buys from Guy Pierce. Much like the extremis villains can shoot electricity, so will he. If they want to make it even dumber, the bots will be triggered or controlled by his rings.
All-in-all, this looks pretty badass

Of course - Stark is only human. To this point he's fought small-time stuff only. Pretty cool to respect reality enough to have this hotshot traumatized by what he went through. Thor won't be, Cap has seen worse than IM has, Widow and Hawkeye have their training and military support resources to handle their issues, and Banner is probably not affected due to his change to Hulk state.
So, Stark is the vulnerable and very human link in the Avengers chain. Super-smart, super-rich, super-capable, but really no more immune to trauma than anyone else.
Fits perfectly into the Marvel "real" approach to things. Crazy fantasy elements all around, but a real, relatable human being at the center of it all.

So, Iron Man and his girl die at the end. Why couldnt you just tease it rather than show the actual death scene? At least The Dark Knight Rises didnt show Bathman getting blowed up real good in the trailer, otherwise why go? Who wants to see a movie where their favorite super hero gets killed...DROWNED...at the end?

The same reason Superman never intervenes on Batman's life or death struggles in Gotham, or The X-men or Avengers don't make quick work of any number of missions involving 2nd rate heroes -
Just because.

I guess I missed the fact that Chris Nolan invented Self Discovery, Self Doubt and Near Death themes for fiction.
This looks nothing like Nolan's Batshit films.
I liked Iron Man 2, it's nowhere near the level of aweful as some of you geeks claim, but one thing that it was missing was tension; maybe Star Wars has perminatley etched in my mind of how sequels should be, but to me, a good sequel raises the stakes. Iron Man 2 didn't do that, and furthermore, the films villians didn't seem like a true threat. If you're going to have a "dangerous" villian or situation, it needs to BE dangerous. Plane and Simple. One of the things that the 2nd film and The Avengers both missed out on with this character is some of the stuff that made the first film special: An arrogant, witty, charming man who see's "American soldiers getting killed by the technology and weapons he built" and having an eye opening experience in which he creates his Iron Man armor with the intent of finding and destroying all his companys weapons. The first film had heart, and then came Iron Man 2 and The Avengers, in which Tony Stark returns to arrogant, selfish, sarcastic prick who convientently becomes a hero for the 3rd acts of both films. The fact that Iron Man 3 has a Tony Stark who is haunted by his new Superhero lifestyle, fearful for those he loves and is on the verge of self discovery makes perfect sense.
Shane Black is incredibly gifted with creating tense actions sequences and balancing them with natural, well written character relationships and humor. I seriously doubt this movie will be devoid of any humor (would really hate for it to have that humorless, charmless, pretentious vibe of a Chris Nolan Batshit film...)
Anyone who thinks that this trailer has even 5% of a Chris Nolan vibe is full of shit...

...but with 98% less turgidity, under-talking, quitting for eight years and overall humorless pretentiousness- plus a story not implausibly grounded in a single cityscape with an interesting, not-difficult-to-hear villain; far superior tech; and I'd say a great deal more fun.

I can buy the "keep to themselves" thing up to a point, but I'm starting to agree that some kind of explanation for the other heroes' absences would be good. Presumably, they'll provide one, at least in passing.
Probably wouldn't be too hard in some cases: Thor is a god that's probably off in some other world, the Hulk is difficult to control and not running around saving anyone's day.
But the SHIELD folks and Cap, that's tougher to explain. Unless there's something really dire going on elsewhere, I would think that a direct threat to the preeminent weapons genius, and presumably a threat to the world, would merit a great deal of awareness and attention by SHIELD. Maybe Widow, Hawkeye, and even Cap are on some other mission, but no way the organization as a whole just lets Stark handle it himself.
Unless, as the trailer suggests could be the case, everyone thinks Stark is dead.
Hope this doesn't just read like a straight rip of TDKR meets Rocky III, because from this snippet it looks like a lot of cool and interesting stuff happening in this film.

I have one of those issues from when I was a kid. He was dragging The Joker!
Or... he was hallucinating it was the Joker, but he had all these other crazy hallucinations about vampires, alien invasions, and Hitler rising from the grave with Nazi zombies.
I love that issue. Still have it somewhere.

Well, that's pretty much it. In Nolan's Bat-verse, Wayne trains for ten years solid, dons the cowl for a single year, then quits for eight, then comes back for a few days, gets a beat-down, gets chucked in the "inescapable" sleestak pit of doom, escapes, comes back for a day or two, throws the keys to the bat-cave to some noob and then re-retires to Italy. How inspiring.
<BR>
When it comes to billionaire vigilante super-heroes, make mine Marvel.

... I mean Tony was in outer space for about 30 seconds. He met demigods or gods (whatever), he met aliens, he killed lots of them. He saved new york from a nuclear catastrophe. Unless you are james bond and killing people is like eating cupcakes. That takes a toll.

Shifty, you confirmed what I said, that you only see 8 rings in that shot of his hands. The later shot with no rings does nothing to prove or disprove that he only has 8 rings.
And d.vader, in that first shot you can see one thumb at the top left of the screen. The shot is definitely subject to interpretation. It looks to me like just shadow, no rings, though one can certainly make the argument that it's a ring. Even still, that's still only 9 rings... :)
Either way, if you'll excuse me now, I have to go find someone to deliver a swift kick to my nuts for taking the time to argue how many rings are on the fingers of a character I know fuck-all about in a movie trailer for a movie that, kickass or not, has little to no bearing on my life whatsoever...
If anyone needs me, I'll be on the couch icing my junk...

Its Mandarin, addressing either his posse of sociopathic nomads, or referring in his own way to the leaders of the free world, with which he will obviously be at war.
And this does look like grade A bad-ass apple pie. 6 months is looking like a long way off.

He says that everything is different after New York and that there are 100 people that want to kill him. Why?
Why would the bad guys care that The Avengers stopped Lokis plan to take over the Earth? If Loki had ben successful would The Manderain had tired to take on Loki and not Stark, was he looking forward to fighting Loki?
I dont see how the 2 go together. Maybe they dont, thats just the impression I got.

The entire point of the Avengers was to bring them together when there is a threat to the entire world: Loki bringing an alien invasion...
This looks like Mandarin/Others going after Tony specifically... If Cap is fighting the Winter Soldier. Thor is off in his world fighting a war. Banner is trying to deal with his Hulk shit why would they even know/care if Iron Man is getting attacked?
Also Avengers made it clear it was a struggle to even get the Avengers together and control them. So the movie kind of explains it in itself... So fucking stop morons.
Stop the comparisons to TDKR... Why are you even comparing them? Tony seems to have PTSD from flying into space and almost getting nuked(understandable). It doesn't look like he quits. He doesn't fight Mandarin in a sewer. Mandarin's plan isn't to isolate Malibu and torture the citizens till its nuked. Anne Hathaway isn't in it... I see nothing to compare. Literally nothing.

That was awesome. And personally I could get behind that voice as the voice of The Mandarin, especially given the Chinese difficulty with rrrr.
He looks to be a uigur this time out. I approve as their the islamic terrorists of China.
As long as he's in Sexy Beast Mode, Kingsley will own this.

I have somehow managed to avoid any and all information and spoilers regarding this movie.
Up until about three minutes ago< I didn't even know tat Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley were playing the heavies and I had no idea that Jessica Biel was inthis. That was her in that one shot, right?
Anyway, stoked that they are going Mandarin and that the two actors they got to play the baddies are two of the best actors in the history of film.
Also, as far as someone up there saying that they better have a really good reason why the rest of the team doesn't show up, I say they already do.
First of all, each member of the Avengers and Justuice League have their own comics and their own adventures outside of their respective teams. Plus, Stark is a nihilistic guy who would absolutely wanna handle shit himself. The better question is....why wasn't Cheadle in The Avengers? Stark comes in when Nick Fury comes calling, not the other way around. So, it's natural that when Stark has a problem he handles it and doesn;t call for help. Fury, on the other hand, deals with a threat in a more logical and safe way by calling in everyone.

the only thing you got out of my comment was the exclamation points? That really annoys you that much?
I'm rarely impressed by someones level of tolerance, but that's pretty impressive. Here you go, this entire feed has zero exclamation points. Happy?

So far they've been able to revolve the names around the number of people featured with variations of the suit.
Iron Man - Tony Stark
Iron Man 2 - Tony Stark
Don Cheadle (War Machine)
Iron Man 3 - Tony Stark
Iron Patriot(Guy Pearce)
Pepper Potts
I think one thing the video made perfectly clear is that they're going the comic book route and Pepper is going to get her own specially made suit either from Stark, or she'll have it made.
At 39 seconds in, thats the suit she is going to ultimately be wearing. The scene itself is a nightmare by Downey Jr.
Iron Patriot is more than likely a red shirt. War Machine ends up getting retired and dismantled by the USFG and the information they learned has been used to build Iron Patriot. With their own controllable Iron Man(and under the manipulation of The Mandarin), the USFG, after the events of New York comes to the determination TS is too big of a threat and a wildcard and they're the ones who send in the choppers. Iron Patriot then goes against The Mandarin and is destroyed.
It'll ultimately be the doubleteam of Potts and Stark that can then overcome and defeat The Mandarin.

Must be why he's "on his own." To protect everyone he cares about he has to go along with the rumors he's dead. Doesn't have access to all his fancy tech, has to get scrappy and all MacGyver-ish. Finally has to reverse course and go "all in" and become basically a robot at the end to save the day, sacrificing some of his own humanity in the process.

'Iron patriot' is war machine with new paint and some design tweaks. He has "Rhodes" stenciled on him and Cheadle has been photographed on set in the practical suit (as well as some stunt men for the effects shots). This is established fact now. Adjust your conjecture accordingly.

I'm so glad they got rid of the usual electric guitar/hard rock musical motif and went with something a bit more serious.
BC that teaser is pretty damn affecting, watching Tony's house crumble into the ocean. And that music is awesome.

Whenever I see a typical Hollywood film that screams "I'm weighty and important" it makes me want to nuke the screen. Both IM3 and Dark Knight are grappling with terrorism, increasing militarism and future tech. Comic book movies for the win.

Of all the movies there's only been one death no one saw coming and that was SPOILERS agent Coulson's I'm waiting for those gut wrenching "oh no they didn't moments". I know this is a different tone then say the dark knight, and you don't want to trivialize a shocking moment like Fox did in X3. but Im waiting for something weighty, (if that makes sense) to happen in this universe.

I understood it when it came to the Avengers because the Avengers was in development before Disney ever bought Marvel. But, why in the world would Disney keep letting Paramount stamp their name on these films after that? Disney is the company actually distributing these films now with no help from Paramount as I understand it, so, what's the deal?

Stark is a douchenozzle. A superhero, super rich, super intelligent, douchenozzle, but still a douchenozzle. Dude does things on his own, at least in the movie version, because that's the character they've created.

...whoa! To me - a non-superhero worshiper who has enjoyed nearly all of the Marvel movies, but puts Iron Man 1 & 2 near the bottom of the list - it looks like it has a bit more bite than the first two. We all know Stark isn't going to die, but shit getting serious would be nice.

Have you ever had to call the cops? It took some time for them to get there, right? And there are thousands of them on duty in any given city. There are only six Avengers. You can assume that they have their own shit to deal with.
Having said that, we don't know that Iron Man won't get an assist from one of the Avengers, but he already has War Machine anyway.

Phase 1: Assemble Avengers
Phase 2: Assemble Ultron
I know, I know, they're making Ant-Man. But the way Tony is set up in the movies, Ant-Man is redundant scientist guy-wise. Stark made Jarvis, wacky extinguisher robots with emotions, and even Whiplash can knock out a bunch of remote control battle suits. Avengers II can't be the same as the first, just with Thanos in command instead of Loki. He's going to have a bigger nastier army that the Avengers can't handle (even improved with Falcon or whatever). So it makes sense that we have a tortured Stark thinking he has to save the world and getting almost killed in Iron Man III would be just the nudge to build an army of battle suits that eventually are used to defeat Thanos (and maybe bring back Coulson as Vision). Replace Wasp with Pepper as Ultron's object of desire, sprinkle in some teasers in the other solo films, and it's all set up. Plus, a bunch of Ultron battle suits are probably relatively easy to do budget-wise since they're all identical (like Iron Man II).

They couldn't do another movie of Downey just walking through it like he did in IM2. Maybe Tony Stark's alcoholism will be shown in this one, or at least headed in that direction. They also have a strong villain, something that was lacking in the previous two. This could very well be the best IM movie yet.

That was compressed into the disco/peeing-in-the-suit party scene in IM2.
And while it would be great to see RDJ turn up the drama chops for that aspect of Stark and the IM comic lore, it's not really that cinematic in terms of a comic book movie based on the context in which the Avengers have been theatrically presented thus far.
Seems like it would be too much of a "break" in the larger timeline to spend an entire movie on it - unless we end up getting "Bond-ized" solo Avenger movies where they go well beyond a trilogy...which they probably shouldn't do as that leads to the darkside.

When I first heard kingsley was gonna be mandarin I thought for sure it was a comment on the fu manchu shit. but if it was really just that the chinese financiers said no cinese actor in this racist ass role... that makes it substantially less awesome.

Your welcome. After I posted that link I spent about an hour looking at various talkshow interviews with him over the years (late 70's to the present). Hadn't realized what a laugh out loud funny guy he is.

Why?
1. We saw robot warriors created and used in Iron Man 2.
2. Tony referred to Life Model Decoys in the Avengers (foreshadowing?)
3. It looks like we may see Tony with the ability to control his suits with his very mind in this installment.
Add the 3 together and what do we get? Life Model Decoys for Stark, Fury, and others in Avengers 2. Or perhaps, THE VISION!

I think it's implied that all of the events of Phase 2 will be at roughly the same time.
Just as that afterthought of a timeline said the same for Phase 1.
They're preoccupied. No one can bail anyone else out.